Anything a Golf can do…
Despite its years of growth, it’s still easy to dismiss the Mini as a small car unsuited to long journeys. By Chris Chilton
HARDKNOTT PASS
in Cumbria is a 393-metre-high, white-knuckle, single-track climb that corkscrews skywards before plummeting to earth again past a fort once occupied by the Roman Empire’s unluckiest centurions. It’s supposedly the joint steepest road in the UK and, despite the arthritic-tortoise kind of speeds involved, one of the most exciting.
Unless you’re an 11-year-old glued to Fortnite on the iPhone in the back seat, in which case it might as well be Monks Way, Milton Keynes. Me being in the front, I thought it was pretty great. Always have. Though I come to the Lake District two or three times each year, it’s probably 20 years since I did Hardknott. Which means I probably last did it in an Issigonis Mini.
The original Mini, a multi-Monte winner, scampered up here no problem. And the Clubman, though 40 per cent longer and twice as heavy, makes light of it, too, helped by some shared characteristics: quick steering, great visibility and a three-cylinder engine that’s bigger on mid-range grunt than its 134bhp would suggest. Just like an old 1275 Cooper S. The big difference between then and now? Brakes. Getting up Hardknott is scary enough, but getting down the other side used to be twice as terrifying on single-leading-shoe drums. No sweat with the Clubman’s four-wheel discs and chunky 245mm tyres, though.
In truth, getting over Hardknott was never going to be the issue. Getting to it might have been. Minis have always been urban, short-distance cars at heart. The Clubman is a big Mini, but faced with a six-hour drive to Cumbria and a mountain of luggage could it play the role of a big car?
It could, and did. Well, big-ish car. There’s only so much big-car character (and big-car quantities of luggage) you can fit into a 4253mm footprint, but the Clubman proved it can do all the sensible stuff the strait-laced VW Golf it’s competing with manages. It cruises easily at motorway speeds, wind and road noise is well suppressed, and you can achieve a genuine 40mpg with little effort. The only nagging doubt was the pain in my left buttock. I’m not sure the Mini’s seats are cut out for seriously long journeys like the duller VW stuff is.